It is, of course, too early to claim that the “leopard spots” found by NASA’s Perseverance rover in reddish rock located in the Jezero Crater of Mars may be a sign of extraterrestrial life.
Perseverance’s instruments also show that the rock contains organic compounds, carbon-based molecules that are building blocks of life as we know it, and the reddish rock that has been called “Cheyava Falls” after a feature in the Grand Canyon in the United States has whitish striations of water-deposited calcium sulfate, while the “leopard spots” contain molecules of iron phosphate, which would be a potential source of food for subsurface microbes.
But organic compounds can be formed by both biological and non-biological processes. That’s why the NASA scientists have been cautious about the discovery stressing that “further research is needed” to determine if life existed on Mars billions of years ago.
But if that proved to be the case true it would rewrite at least part of the solar system’s history:
There has always been a debate among scientists about whether life originated on Earth or if it was brought to the planet by extraterrestrial planets or rocks. If there was life of Mars at some point it would give support to the latter theory;
And if that was the case, the asteroids in the solar system might be considered of higher value because they might be carriers of life from billions of years ago;
It would also reinforce the famous comparison that Mars is the past of Earth and Venus its future.
That’s why the significance of the news from Perseverance should not be underestimated — the possibility of life having ever existed on Mars remains slim but there is now a pointer to that possibly. But how to prove that will be a major challenge for mankind because the US, although being the first nation of the world having sent a mission to Mars and having accomplished the Perseverance mission in 2021, hasn’t announced any plan to bring the samples back to Earth yet, as a round trip to Mars will involve far more complicated technologies and much higher costs than a single trip.
Which in turn means there is ample space for international cooperation. China has sent its Tianwen 1 mission to Mars that has proved the resilience and reliability of technologies, with a further plan to be the first country to bring samples back from Mars. The rocks on Mars are of huge research potential for scientists, and by working together the two countries could raise the odds of such a challenging mission being a success.